FAIL

November 01, 2010

I was so excited to make this dish. I wanted to tell you all about how, when I worked for Discovery Channel in the late 1990s, no matter where I traveled the world I relished the familiar sweet, salty, and punch-you-in-the-sinuses taste of the black licorice at this one little kiosk in the Frankfurt Airport. How the anise hyssop plant on my front stoop is still blossoming and sprouting new leaves. How stoked I was about making orange confit. How nervous I was to make the beautiful, delicate, and intricate spun sugar nests to sit atop this sweet, little bite.

I wanted to keep riding the wave of my sponge cake success, and be able to share with you how marvelously I deglutenized yet another fine-dining, avant-garde dessert.

I hoped to be able to show you how you cream an egg, egg yolks, butter, and sugar...

... then add flour, cornstarch, and dry licorice extract to make the most amazing batter:

... which you bake for a little over an hour until it's spongy and light golden brown..... and how when it's baking you walk out the front door every 10 minutes so you can relish how wonderful the house smells when you walk back in...

... but what I hadn't counted on is that as it cooled, it hardened. So much so that I nearly broke a molar as I sampled a little taste of it.

That was the first sign that, perhaps, this dessert was not going to go the way I'd planned.

Regardless, I forged ahead and continued to follow the book's instructions, which was to break that cake into pieces (using a very sharp knife) and put them into a saucepan with some half-and-half, licorice syrup, and glucose powder:

The goal was to reliquify the cake enough so that it became a purée, which you then freeze and cut into small pieces. Only, no matter how much I stirred it and broke apart those cake pieces into the liquid, it woudn't get close to a purée.

I added more half-and-half, and then some more licorice syrup... thinking that maybe all it needed was a little more liquid (because apparently I think I know more than Chef Achatz does about his own dishes ::::eye roll::::), that maybe my scale was off (it's not), or that I misread the instructions (I didn't), or that the licorice extract was expired (nope), or that the moon was rising in Mercury (I have no idea what that even means).

And even after all that, all I ended up with was this:

... which is not even close to being purée-like. Despite that fact, I added the six soaked gelatin sheets, and then even tried pushing some of it through a chinois just like the book suggested. And, it was awful. Nothing happened. It just wouldn't work. It was the texture and consistency of wet drywall (which, I know, doesn't really make sense and is sort of an oxymoron, but whatever). It was just bad. And wrong.

So.

I threw it all away.

Without the cake base, there was no need to do the orange confit, the muscovado candy, or the spun sugar (which I was soooo looking forward to). So, I put all those ingredients back into the pantry and the fridge.

I cleaned the kitchen, felt completely dejected, and was in a rotten mood. Like, not even the Real Housewives or the Kardashians could snap me out of it. I KNOW. I was not smiles times.

I fell back onto the couch, lifted the lid of my laptop, and sent an email to my friends, Holly and Linda -- the friends who are also neighbors, who have eaten everything I've cooked for this blog (and the other one) -- to tell them the evening's tasting was canceled "because this dessert is broken."

Their response ran the gamut of "Noooooooooo!!!!" and "That's never happened to you before!!!" to "Stupid recipe" to "Sponge cake karma." Which is exactly why I love them.

So, I'm ordering more licorice extract and trying this again, because I should be able to do this and do it well, damn it. I'm pretty sure that what I used as my gluten-free substitution for all-purpose flour is what caused the problem, so I'm gonna tinker with my own formulas and see if I can make this work.

You guys, I have learned so much from this cookbook, and have come so far in my gluten-free baking in the past two years, that I should be able to make this. It might not be perfect, but it could be pretty freakin' fantastic.

July 12, 2010

And after a total of two days of active work and dehydration time, I ended up with a leathery war wound with Band-Aid pieces strewn about:

I screwed it up somewhere along the way. Everything seemed to be going well up until the final step, the last dehydration bit. It never un-leathered itself. It never got crispy and dry. And, the photo in the book doesn't even look like there are rose petals in this bite. Argh. I've eaten this thing three times in the restaurant, and I actually really, really like it.

I don't like failing at something that I know I can do. That makes me CRAZY.

Think the raspberries heard me talking about how much I don't like them? How I wish they were as good as blackberries? How they're hollow and seedy and look like they misplaced their tweezers?

I'm gonna have to sweet talk my next batch of raspberries. Put on some Barry White. Dim the lights. Tell them how pretty they are. Maybe THAT will work.

Actually, I just bought an even more precise digital jeweler scale (measures to the 0.01g), and I'm gonna try it again, 'cause I'm feeling stubborn. If it doesn't work again, then I'm buying the URL ihateraspberriestheytotallytotallysuck.com. You watch. It'll be the next big internet sensation!

May 03, 2009

If this were baseball, I'd have to shut down the blog, because three strikes and I'm out, kids.

Strike one: my pineapple glass was so not glass. Strike two: my rosewater envelope was so not an envelope. And now? What is so lovingly and beautifully featured on page 366 of the Alinea cookbook was rendered by yours truly to not even come close to resembling the final product, let alone County Fair-worthy food-on-a-stick.

And the worst part? Wasted bourbon. Almost a whole bottle down the drain, literally.

Actually, that's not the worst part. The worst part is the fact that even though I think I'm a pretty smart person with decent intuition and deduction skills, I still can't figure out where this all went wrong. I mean, I have a few ideas about one or two of the steps, but overall? This isn't a difficult dish, in my estimation and I hate that I couldn't successfully pull it off. In fact, I kind of don't even want to write this post. I would rather just put up the photo of the final result and have you all ridicule it, heckle it, give it a wedgie, dip its braid in an inkwell, boo and hiss and tell me to pack it in and call it a day.

But I know that Bea Arthur would want me to put on a floor-length vest, hold my head up high and get on with it already, so I will. Except for the floor-length vest part.

This dish, ultimately, is supposed to be a cube of bourbon gel, a cube of sweet potato gel, and a cube of brown sugar candy, all tempura batter-dipped and deep-fried on a stick of cinnamon that you then light on fire and blow out so that you can eat this dish while inhaling the aroma of cinnamon. I think it sounds like the most perfect thing, don't you? Let's kick things off with the bourbon gel.

I poured 600g of bourbon (nearly the ENTIRE BOTTLE, the rest of which I just drank straight after the final plating *snort*... and you, too, will snort when you see how loosely the term "final plating" truly applies, but NO PEEKING... stay with me) into a saucepan and added the 7 grams of Kelcogel JJ gellan gum.

Not to go off on yet another tangent, but doesn't JJ gellan gum sound like the name of a detective from the 70s, or perhaps some old-timey investigative reporter with a "scoop" card in the brim of his hat? "Yeah, I'm J.J. Gellangum, see? Gonna bust this joint wide open, see?"

Oh, let me also note that I started this dish at 7:30 in the morning... not the ideal time to be smelling bourbon, but let's return you to your regularly scheduled program.

So, bourbon, gellan gum, saucepan. I mixed it with my immersion blender until it was fully incorporated, and brought it to a simmer over medium-high heat.

I poured it into a shallow pan and waited for it to cool to room temperature, at which point, it was also supposed to set.

After five hours at room temperature, it still hadn't set:

So, I put it in the fridge, thinking THAT might help.

After two hours in the refrigerator, it was still the consistency of loose, runny, hospital Jell-O. With all apologies to the Jell-O corporation for the comparison.

So, I put it back in the refrigerator and figured I'd check it again when I was ready to do the final step. Oh, I love my optimism...

During the first bit of bourbon-gel-non-setting time, I made the sweet potato gel. Or, as I like to call it, Hey, Velveeta!!

First, I peeled and cut 500g of sweet potato into slices and let them simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes in some cream with some salt.

How sad that the only high point in this whole process was that I was able to eyeball and select a sweet potato that was just two grams shy of the 500g requirement. Boo-ya!

I strained the potatoes (reserving the cream) and put them in the blender with 300g of the reserved cream, and blended on high speed until it was smooth:

I'd been soaking 10 gelatin sheets in cold water, so I squeezed out the water, and added them to the sweet potato purée, which I'd poured into a mixing bowl, stirring to incorporate everything:

I then poured this mixture through a chinois and onto a plastic wrap-lined sheet tray, which I put in the refrigerator to set, per the book's instructions:

While the sweet potato gel was setting, I made the brown sugar candy -- again, something that was supposed to sort of solidify into something I could cut into squares.

Into the saucepan went water and yellow pectin, which I blended like mad with my immersion blender until it had dissolved and was fully incorporated. Then, I blended in the sugar and citric acid and brought it to a boil. Once it had begun to boil, I carefully added the Trimoline, glucose, and brown sugar, and brought it all to 230 degrees.

I poured the mixture into a plastic wrap-lined baking pan (my sheet trays were otherwise engaged)

The brown sugar candy, when I touched the surface of it after two hours, seemed firm and ready to be used.

At this point, the bourbon gel had been trying to "set" for nearly nine hours, and still, it was runny and not even close to being anything that could be cut into 3/4" squares. So, I abandoned that part of the dish and figured the sweet potato and brown sugar on their own would be pretty good on their own, so I soldiered forth with hope, optimism, and a sense of pri.... CRAP.

Look what happened when I tried to cut the brown sugar candy:

I put it in the fridge for an hour or two, and nothing. Not quite runny, but looser than marmalade or chutney.

Even after being in the refrigerator, it stayed the same consistency, and the solid globs that you see above only got more pronounced (and they weren't there when it was poured in as a liquid)

At this point, I had to decide what to do next. Cry? Cut the sweet potato stuff, which had gelled nicely, into squares and slather the brown sugar gel on it before tempura battering it? I tried that with one, and it just wouldn't stay on and got even gloppier, so I just decided I'd batter the sweet potato squares and deep fry those, adding a little extra dusting of brown sugar as I pulled the hot, fried, tempura-battered sweet potato out of the oil. That's how I'd make sure it tasted like brown sugar. Yeah, that's the ticket.

So, I speared my gelled potato cubes with a cinnamon stick (of course, the sweet potato gel set exactly as it should have), lightly dredged them in flour, then the tempura batter, and cooked them for three minutes in canola oil that had been heated to 375 degrees, per the book's instructions.

Yeah.... sounds easy and straightforward doesn't it?

Dude, that ain't County Fair-worthy, let alone Alinea-worthy.

Toothless carnies can make this, but I can't?

And, see what I mean by "Hey, Velveeta!!"?

Let's have a side-by-side comparison to further illustrate how badly this turned out:

I didn't even bother to light the end of the cinnamon stick on fire before tasting this, because I was certain I would've caught my hair on fire, so I decided not to tempt fate and just took a bite of the crispy tempura batter and gloppy, melted sweet potato. What did it taste like? Well, I don't know, because I burned the roof of my mouth.

I CAN HEAR YOU LAUGHING OUT THERE.

IT'S NOT FUNNY.

Except, I guess it kind of is. Sort of.

But it's really, honestly, frustrating. I feel like my kitchen is cursed. Maybe it's the tonka bean from Capricorns (sic) Lair that put some sort of creepy hoodoo mojo on my house. I think I'll spend the next few days waving veal bones around while singing like Karen Carpenter, or burning sage and chives and wafting it into the corners of the kitchen... some sort of culinary exorcism is in order, methinks, because this scourge must stop. I have to get my groove back. Lieutenant-Detective-Investigative-Reporter J.J. Gellan Gum, you let me down.

April 19, 2009

If you've been reading this blog from the beginning, you may have noticed that I have been incredibly resistant to buying and/or owning a juicer. I just hate the thought of forking over my hard-earned dough to buy appliances or tools I'll never really use, and my kitchen storage space is pretty limited, so I've held off on owning a juicer. And where I live, the hippies at the local co-op love to strike up a "conversation" in the produce aisle and lecture on and on and on about all the (use your know-it-all, semi-stoner NPR voice here) organic, free-range, local, raw, earth-saving, vitamin-boosting, colon-blowing things they put in their freakin' juicers (which, let me just say this: I do not need to hear about anyone's colon when I'm food shopping, because, GROSS), so juicers are just not my thing.

Until now.

That's right, my friends, I am now the proud owner of a HealthMaster JuiceDude 2000 (I made up that last part), courtesy of my friend Anita's sister, Patti. As the story was told to me, Anita (who lives in the SF Bay Area) and Patti (who lives in suburban VA) were talking on the phone one night and happened to talk about this blog, and Patti mentioned that she had a juicer sitting on a shelf in her basement that she has never used and would be happy to donate to the cause. I imagine the conversation went a little something like this:

Patti: I was reading one of Carol's posts the other day, and I really think she should use a juicer instead of her food processor or buying that bottled stuff, I mean COME ON. What is WRONG with her?

Anita: I dunno. I mean, I can ask her, but if you hear roaring, screeching, cursing, and spitting from the other side of the Potomac, then I guess you know her answer.

Patti: Maybe we can convert her... show her the way of the juice.

Anita: You're right. It's the least we can do.

Patti: I mean, what's the worst that can happen?

Anita: She makes up fake dialogue between us.

Patti: Oh yeah, right.

And, scene.

So, I picked up the juicer from Patti at her house (who many years ago, I found out, had brought the juicer home when her old office closed because no one there ever used it and she thought she might, but never did -- so WHO'S the anti-juicite NOW, Patti, HUH????), brought it back to my house, and, with a heavy sigh, put it to work on this dish. I also kicked a hacky sack around while I did it. (No I didn't.)

The first thing I did was pull out the list of cookbook errata that Grant emailed me a few months ago, to check and see if any of the ingredient measurements needed to change -- and sure enough, this was one of the dishes that had some edits. I'll share them as I go.

The first thing I did was peel, core, and quarter the pineapple:

Technically, I more than quartered the pineapple, because the juicer's fruit chute was a skinny little thing, so I needed to make the pieces more slender to be able to fit.

I juiced the pineapple, and strained the juice into a saucepan:

Go, JuiceDude, go!!!

Now, before I go any further, I need to 'fess up that when I weighed the pineapple juice before mixing in the sugar and saffron, I encountered a little snag: the book says I need to work with 350g of pineapple juice, and my pineapple yielded only 300g of juice (85% of 350g, or 15% less than 350g). So, using my handy-dandy calculator, I adjusted the already-adjusted numbers.

Here's what the corrected numbers are supposed to be (make a note in your book, if you have one):

But, since I only had 300g of pineapple juice, I added 21g sugar, 0.85g salt, and just a pinch of saffron threads. I also had to modify the Pure-Cote measurement later on, and added 38g of that instead of the full 45g.

Parents, feel free to show this post to your kids when they bitch and moan that "I'll never need to know how to do fractions or percentages ever in my life so why do I have to do this stupid math homework?!?!?!! GAH!!!!!!!!"

Look at me, all about the life lessons. First, showing tolerance in embracing the juicer, and now amazing you with my mathematical prowess and the power of learning. Believe it or not, there are even more life lessons to come in this post, I promise. It's like a regular afterschool special up in here.

So, where were we? Ah yes, the pineapple juice, sugar, salt, and saffron in a saucepan.

I brought it to a boil over medium heat, then turned off the flame, covered the pot, and let it steep for five minutes. That gave me just enough time to dismantle and clean my JuiceDude 2000. Well, that's sort of a lie. It gave me enough time to dismantle it, wipe down the machine, and rinse the removable parts before putting them in the dishwasher.

I strained the steeped juice through my chinois and into a blender. I added the PureCote modified starch and blended it on high speed for 10 minutes:

Can I just say that 10 minutes is a really long time when you're standing at the blender, holding the lid on tight because you're pretty sure if you don't, it'll fly off at some point and spew pineapple-saffron juice all over your kitchen, which will inevitably attract an army of ants and the exterminator bill for that is something I just don't have in the budget right now, thankyouverymuch.

I poured the starched, blended juice through my chinois and into a bowl so it would be more pourable for the next step:

Now, here's another life lesson from me to you: don't assume or think you know more than one of the greatest chefs in the world, and decide that using your Silpat instead of a giant sheet of acetate is an acceptable next step, because if you do, your lovely pineapple glass -- which is supposed to dry on a flat surface at room temperature overnight (10-12 hours) on a sheet of acetate will go from this:

... to this:

Um, yeah. I don't think this is what pineapple glass is supposed to look like.

At this point, I consulted the book to see if the bacon powder was even worth pursuing, and decided to abandon this dish and put the bacon to better use. I scraped the pineapple glorp off the Silpat, muttering to myself about my rassin'-frassin' cock up, and hit Twitter to ask those who follow me what flavors they think didn't go with bacon.

I mean, it's easy to think of things that go with bacon -- and one of the reasons I was psyched about this dish (before I screwed it up) is because pineapple and bacon are delicious together. My favorite pizza topping combination is bacon and pineapple (with onions and extra cheese). And, while bacon on its own is quite lovely (even though I think bacon has jumped the shark, but that's a whole separate topic, I suppose), I figured in the spirit of exploration and creativity, I would be the Internet's guinea pig in tasting the very things that people thought would be absolutely terrible with bacon. I got quite a few replies to my inquiry, and the twelve things that popped up most frequently in people's responses are as follows:

Blackberries (the person actually suggested raspberries because he/she knew I hated them [*evil*], but Whole Foods didn't have any raspberries, so I went with blackberries instead [*nanny-nanny-boo-boo])

Banana

Durian -- which I couldn't bring myself to do, because it was at this point that I was moving across the street to stay with my neighbors while my house was being worked on, and I couldn't subject them and their lovely home to that smell, so I swapped the durian out for Peeps, and

Swedish fish.

While I roasted the bacon in the oven (a far superior cooking method than pan-frying, in my opinion, and done at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes), I prepared the mise en place of the other ingredients.

I dragged my helpers (my neighbor's two sons, ages 10 and 12) away from the Wii, and we began our taste test of bacon with the aforementioned ingredients. First up? Bacon with oranges -- I brushed on an orange glaze I'd made for salmon the night before, which was just fresh-squeezed navel and cara cara oranges, reduced over a low heat for about 4 hours:

Delicious. We were psyched that we'd gotten off to such a great start. Bacon + orange = yum!

Next up was bacon with carrots. I had blanched some carrots the night before for another dish, and held these aside for this experiment:

Surprisingly good! We thought it would be gross, or at least an odd texture, but the kids ended up fighting over who got to eat the fourth one. Score!

Now, it was time for bacon with graham crackers:

The kids liked this one, but I thought it tasted like bacon dredged in sawdust. Blech.

And the one we were all prepared to hate and spit into the sink -- bacon with anchovy:

I think the quote of the day was from the younger of the two brothers, the 10-year old who said, "This is a salty, fishy surprise, like caviar -- I love it!" I did, too. We all did. It was the surprise hit of the afternoon.

Next up was supposed to have been the pickled watermelon rind, but because I didn't have a chance to drive to PA to find some in my hometown farmers' market, nor did local pickler, jam maker, and fellow food maven, Heather Shorter, have any in stock, I settled for pickled pumpkin:

This was the worst thing I think I've ever eaten. It was as if someone had eaten a jar of pickles with some pumpkin pie spice and then vomited it up onto the bacon. I actually had to spit mine out into the sink, it was that bad. The kids washed theirs down with a giant glass of water; they were far braver than I. But we all agreed, it was the worst combination of all the things we tried. Boooooooo, pickled pumpkin.... booooooo....

So, after you've eaten something that tasted like vomit, and choked back your own vomit in the process, how would you cleanse your palate? Why, with bacon and Peeps, of course!

This was pretty "meh." Did not meet expectations. Was actually more chewy than I'd hoped. Almost flavorless. Disappointing all around. But +10 points for not reactivating my vomit-related salivary glands.

Next up? Bacon with kiwi. I had very high expectations for this combo, and was actually surprised that more than ten people on Twitter replied with kiwi as a suggestion of something that would NOT go with bacon:

AWESOME. Love, love, love. I may actually try to do a kiwi sorbet with candied bacon chunks because I think I would love it.

Next on the list was bacon with Swedish fish (my favorite candy):

This was kind of gross. Imagine a Ludens or Smith Brothers cough drop with bacon fat in the middle. Or, a cherry LifeSaver with bacon chunks inside. Too sweet, too cherry-like, and too tough and chewy. The orange was a better salt-sweet combo. This one was icky. Not disgusting, but not the homerun I thought it might be.

A friend once sent me a tin of bacon mints as a gift. They were pretty vile because when you opened the tin, a sort of b.o. scent wafted out, and it made those mints all the more unappealing to try. So, I was NOT looking forward to trying bacon with peppermint (we crushed a Starlight mint and sprinkled it on top):

I was prepared to hate this, but actually kind of liked it. Not like I'd rush to make or eat this again, but it didn't make me gag,so there you go. We all kind of liked it. I was surprised.

Next on the list was a pairing I was also surprised that multiple people on Twitter thought would be gross -- bacon with banana. I don't know about you, but banana pancakes with a side of bacon at the diner? That's my kinda breakfast.

This was amaaaaaaaazing. So tasty and delicious. But, there was an odd (but good) texture/flavor thing that happened when you paired them -- they tasted like a pear. It was the weirdest thing. As I was chewing it, I couldn't figure out what it had morphed into. The 10-year old said, "Huh, this tastes like pear. I LOVE IT." He's totally right. Bacon + banana = pear. Take that, science.

The next combination we tried was bacon with blackberries. I love me some blackberries and I love me some bacon, so how could this go wrong:

It even looks pretty... almost like caviar, doesn't it? Well, it tasted like doody... not that I've ever tasted doody, but you know what I mean, right? It was just bad. I was hoping for an explosion of flavor -- of salt and sweet and juiciness -- and instead, I just got a mouthful of gack. Not a hit with any of us. I can only imagine that raspberries, my nemesis, would be even worse. Ugh.

Last, but not least, we paired bacon with lemon sorbet:

Kinda looks like little quenelles of Crisco or lard on there, doesn't it? It's 365 brand Meyer Lemon Sorbet, and together with the bacon, it was a huge thumbs up. We were sort of dreading this one because it was our last bite, and the fragrance of the sorbet was a wee overpowering as I brought the plate forward and we didn't really want to end on something we disliked, but it was fantastic! Whew...

So, there you have it. Not exactly "Pineapple, bacon powder, black pepper," but hopefully enjoyable just the same. And now, me and my juicer are going to hit the road in our groovy VW bus to buy something tie-dyed and join a drum circle. Peace...

Music to Cook By:The Magic Numbers; The Magic Numbers. Embarrassing confession -- I have seen the movie "Catch & Release" about 50 times. I can't help it -- whenever I'm bored and flipping channels and happen upon it, I watch it. It's NOT EVEN A GOOD MOVIE (it's really pretty bad, actually), but for some reason I can't tear myself away when it's on. One of the last times I watched it, I realized that I really liked the music in the movie, and a few tunes in particular, one of which is "Take a Chance" by The Magic Numbers. So, I started downloading their other music and really liked it. Hope you will, too.

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Your comments and questions are welcome. However, please think of this web site as if it were my dining room table, and make sure your comments reflect the manner in which you'd treat someone in their home, as if you'd only just met them and were sitting across from them, sharing a meal. I've got thick skin and can take constructive criticism (because ultimately, we all learn from it), but nasty, rude, grossly off-topic, attacking, baiting, or blatantly self-promotional comments aren't welcome and won't be posted. It's just not cool.